Wandering spiders of the Amazon – The project
Aim of this webpage is to make scientific informations on Amazonian wandering spiders available to all interested people, not only scientists. We would like to make species recognition and identification easier and encourage further investigations on the taxonomy, biology and ecology of these interesting spiders. The restriction or bias to Amazonian species is due to the overwhelming diversity and the multitude of problems with descriptions, loss of types and lack of knowledge.
Everyone can contribute to the project and support us with informations of any kind: observations in the field, occurences of species, collection data, fotos... Very valuable would be new records of spiders of the genera in South America, with verified information on the locality (coordinates) and species identity.
However national laws and rules must be respected. It is not allowed to collect and take away spiders without a permission in Brazil and other countries.
To be included in the contributors list, please send us a photo and some basic informations about you and your interest.
Dr. Hubert Höfer
Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe
hubert.hoefer@smnk.de
www.smnk.de
- Diploma and Ph.D. in biology from the university of Ulm
- doctoral thesis on ecology of spiders in an Amazonian inundation forest
- 20 years of research experience in the Brazilian Amazon: diversity of spider assemblages, taxonomy and ecology of wandering spiders, applied soil ecology
- head of department zoology and curator of invertebrates at SMNKsince 2002
- research interest: arachnology, biodiversity, soil fauna, applied ecology
Dr. Heiko Metzner
- Diploma in biology (Erlangen, Prof. Dr. Otto von Helversen)
- Thesis: "Die Springspinnen Griechenlands", finished and published in 1999
- 2 years of scientific volontary work at the SMNK
- specialized in european and neotropical salticidae
- field trips to Poland, Greece, Brazil, Argentina (Prof. Maria Elena Galiano)
- since 1999 emloyed in advertising companies as teamleader interactive
Dr. Thierry Gasnier
Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM)
trjgasnier@gmail.com
- graduated in Biological Sciences at University of São Paulo (1987)
- master (in Ecology, 1992) and doctor degree (Entomology, 1996) in Tropical Biology and Natural Resources by the National Institute of Research of the Brazilian Amazon (INPA) / Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM)
- associate professor at UFAM since 1998, lecturing in undergraduate and graduate levels on General Ecology, Ecology of the Amazon Region, Fundaments of Research (Epistemology, Biostatistics and Experimental Design, Scientific Communication), Applied Biostatistics, Field Research, Biology and Society
- research experience in ecology of Reptiles and Arachnids
Dr. Antonio D. Brescovit
Instituto Butantan, São Paulo
antonio.brescovit@butantan.gov.br
www.butantan.gov.br
- Diploma and Ph.D. in zoology from Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR), Pós-Graduação em Zoologia, 1995
- Associated Professor of the Post-Graduation at the Universidade de São Paulo
- Researcher at the Instituto Butantan since 1994, now in the "Laboratório Especial de Coleções Zoológicas"
- Research focus on taxonomy and systematics of Neotropical spiders of the families Ctenidae, Anyphaenidae, Clubionidae, Palpimanidae and haplogyne families
M. Sc. Claudia Wesseloh
Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe
claudia.wesseloh@smnk.de
www.smnk.de
- Graduated 2011 from the University of Hamburg, M.Sc. in Biology.
- General interests in (tropical) faunas, especially Araneae
- behavioural biology, functional morphology and evolution, biodiversity, ecology, taxonomy and systematics of ctenid spiders (wandering spiders), esp. Phoneutria
- sexual selection and evolution of genital morphologies in ctenid spiders, esp. Phoneutria